$1350 effective

BB - solid player. Seems like a regular.

1 limper to hero who raised to $25 from the button with J T

BB re-raised to $100, limper folds, hero calls.

Flop($210) Q 6 7

BB bets $150 Hero calls

Turn($510) 3

BB bets $300, hero calls

River($1110) 2

BB checks, Hero($850 left) - ???


So, here's a theory question: If we decide to call on the turn, should we always jam the river? And if we plan to check back the river, should we have just folded on the turn then? I have a lot of turn decisions like this, and it seems like if we don't plan to bluff the river, some draws must be mucked earlier. That's my perception, but I could be wrong.

His bet sizings and check on river make me think two things. First, we should get here with more value, fewer busted draws, because we'd be raising with value if he bet smaller, but mostly folding our draws when he's betting bigger. Second, he likes his hand less and less on each subsequent street.

He's basically sizing down, c-betting 75% pot, barreling 60% pot, and checking river. This would be an odd line with thick value, and leads me to believe he's got some ace -high or king-high hand that missed. This is going to be AK or KJ a lot, I think.

Not sure if we need to jam, or if a smaller bluff will get through more, because it looks more like value. No need to jam if he's trapping. I might bet $450-$600 here.

Doesn't seem like a spot where we'd want to go polar, because most of the draws missed. Our thickest value here is going to be something like AQ or 76, and we could be going thin with 87 or A7. If we jam, we're repping something like 54, but that just doesn't seem credible when we flat call turn.

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I don't like it. I don't think he's folding a Q or better, and he might call w/ a smaller pair because you are repping very little. I mean, what on earth would you play this way that can beat a Q? Maybe you have AQ, but that's about it, and I don't think you'd shove AQ on the river. Heck, he might hero with A-high the way this hand was played.

FWIW, I'm not thrilled with the call of the 3bet pre. Once I hit this flop, I might just check/raise or call and fold turn.

With respect Doc, a 450-600 river bet gives V 4-1 ranging down to 3-1 to call. He arrives with almost nothing he will fold for this price range given the preflop action except maybe AcKx or AxKc.

I think our choice is to go polar or give up on turn. We are basically floating a good reg and we have turned no additional equity. This is the spot for a polar bet or just fold.

Ap: river brick changes nothing, we are repping thin and V will get over 2-1 if we jam. I don't like this spot. I'd think x/f>jam>block bet.

Not your question, but: while I haven’t looked at a Solver, the Turn just has to be a pure fold. You have the single worst flush draw you can ever have in this spot: all your Ace-high and King-high flush draws have at least an over (and a lot of your ace-highs will have straight draws too, or 2-pair/trips outs), while Tc9c and 9c8c have straight draws.

JcTc has just the club. And he bet 60% pot! If you can’t fold your absolute worst flush draws, what ARE you folding?

We don’t have “Implied Odds” either—or at least, whatever you imagine they are is negated by all the reverse implied odds here (because our draw is just merely the 4th nuts, if a ton of money goes in on a Club river, it’ll very often be because we’re beat.)

So yeah. We can never call on the Turn. It might not be a pure fold (maybe the Solver thinks this draw sucks so much it’s a combo we turn into a bluff?), but we simply can’t call.

As far as I understand in such hands, it's better to fold the turn if we don't plan to bluff on the river.

Something like 8 7 5 T boards are much better, or even K J Q type of boards.

On a K J Q board, even if my flush draw missed, I can represent a ton of hands if he checks.

BUT: you did call, and you’re asking about the River. So:

From a Theory Perspective, since our Turn call didn’t have the right Direct *or* Implied odds to be profitable on its own, it could only *get* to the profitable realm if we believed we had “bluff outs”—cards that don’t make our hand but that we can bluff at to win.

Now, if V just has AcKc, there are a LOT of River cards we can shove on to win. Almost all of them! Anything that’s not an Ace or a Club! (Indeed, if V just has Ace-high, we don’t even need a shove to win—he has to fold to even smaller bets).

On the other side, if V has the top of his range—QQ or 77–we can NEVER bluff, he’ll call EVERYTHING.

But what if he’s in his medium value range? His one-pair hands:AA, KK, AQ, KQ? Well, if he has those hands, then it’s very unlikely that he’ll check-fold if the river is a red 2. But…he might check-fold AA/KK if the River is another Queen. He might fold KQ if the river is an Ace, or AQ if it’s a King. He might fold any of those if the River is a 5 or a 4. Maybe he’ll check-fold to a Ten or a 7 or a 6.

…This is all a long way of saying: I think we do need to bet this River a lot if he checks. And our sizing should depend on the board: I think we should shove on River cards that put 4-to-a-straight on them (the 5 or 4), and maybe/sometimes the Q. On these rivers we can say “I’m beating Aces, I’m putting you in an awful spot.”

But on the real brick Rivers—like this offsuit 3–we can’t shove. First because it’ll never work (he’ll never fold Aces), and second because it’s not telling a likely story. Our only hands that can shove for value are 77 and 66 (while our bluffs are legion). So on those Rivers, we want to target V’s BAD range—his Ace-highs, his random 87s 3-bets, 99, etc. Because on these runouts, our story with value hands will change to “I want light value with QJ so I’m gonna bet small enough that you’ll think about calling with Ace-high.” We don’t need to shove (indeed we shouldn’t)—we can bet $400.

So TLDR: bet $400.

(But fold the Turn!)

I guess another question is how does V see you? However, since you don't know him well, he probably doesn't know you, and I doubt you have an OMC or maniac image.

Good analysis. Thank you. And against terrible players we might consider calling here? Because we assume that once we hit, we can milk them for value.

FWIW, I like bluff-shoving as a turn raise here.

I think you would shove the turn for value with a big hand with the draws out. Hard to represent much on the river when an extreme brick hits. Seems like the river shove looks like a busted draw or a pair turned into a bluff.

The call on the turn seems really bad: you have neither direct nor implied odds, as davomalvolio has already pointed out.
The standard play is a fold ott.
And even if you want to turn your hand into a bluff, the turn is the moment you want to bluff-shove.

Anyway, as played, river is as blank as it gets, you have less than a psb left and a line that doesn't make a lot of sense.
In theory, V should fold a very small fraction of his range at this point, to my understanding at least.
So, if you have a read that V basically gave up by checking river, then go ahead and bluff, otherwise just give up yourself.

Yeah, just to be clear, I probably would have folded turn more often than not, when an opponent barrels big. But we got to the river, so now we have to decide what to do.

My view is that V is either checking something with minimal showdown value to fold to any reasonable size bet, or checking to call any reasonable size bet, so jamming doesn't make sense. It could be a spot where a big bet gets hero-called more than a small bet.

We can't check-fold because we're IP and V checked to us. Checking back is giving up, which seems like a bad end to an oddly played hand. If we're not going to fold turn, then logically I'd think we're committing to bet river if V checks to us, even on a brick.

The river card is a brick that changes nothing, but V's action is the change. Instead of barreling, he checked.

It's certainly possible V is planning to call a bet, but it's also possible he's hoping we check. For me, the key factor here is V's bet sizing, which steadily decreased on each street, ending in zero when he checks. That would be an odd line with strong value, or a bluff, and smells like ace high, king high, or something like 88.

He went 4x 3B pre, 75%, 60%, zero. That looks suspicious to me, likely indicating weakness. It's "just fold and go away already" sizing, and if I picked up on it in game, I could see calling the turn to bluff river. It certainly looks like V may have been bluffing and is giving up, but we can't win with Jack high here, if V has AK or KJ.

All due respect to OP and his read that V is solid, I'm not so sure when V takes this line, which is why I'm not sure I'd have bluff-raised turn or folded turn, rather than calling to hit our draw or steal the pot if V checks to us.

I don't love the spot, but if V is planning to fold to a value-looking bet, we don't need to go huge. We just need to size the bet to look like we want a call, without making it so small he can profitably call with ace high.

We'll hate ourselves if we check back and V rolls over KJ, AK, or some weak PP that surely would have folded.

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I think a river bullet is appropriate.

River bluff seems very iffy to me, prefer give-up. We might get villain to fold some ax, and if he took this line with idk JJ/tt, maybe a few random 7x/6x.

But I think villain is xc qx+, and that should be a large part of his range. And if villain range is weak enough we can get a lot of bluffs through Hero might as well semi-bluff raise earlier.

Results?

There's no real theory governing that. There's strategy maybe but there's no theory of bluffing river.

Why would you jam the river here? Your hand, as played screams a draw. I'd call you here 100%

Literally no theory on bluffing river? Really?

This is my skeptical face.

If nothing else, I'm fairly certain game theory says we shouldn't be bluffing the river with all our missed flush draws.

That notwithstanding, if we were to plug this hand into a solver, to include the bet sizings V used, I wouldn't be shocked if a solver put hero's hand into a low-frequency bluffing range, if only because it blocks some QX combos V might have 3B pre, like QJcc, and because it has almost no showdown value against some high-card hands that might fold to a bet.

I'd say no. If we rivered a flush, would we jam? Would the flush card matter? Like, what if it's the 2, versus the A? I'd think that matters.

If we miss, should we jam? I'd say no, because we might catch a J or T for some showdown value, though either card might also complete a straight, possibly giving us even less reason to turn 2nd pair into a bluff.

If we want to bluff, should we jam? I'd say no, because we don't always need to go huge with our bluffs. I'd rather bluff huge with the nut blocker when the flush comes in, instead of bluffing huge with JTcc when the flush misses.

Our bluff size should match our value bet size. What value hands would you have on the river that would bet huge, the way this was played?

There will be better cards / board textures to bluff, and worse cards / board textures to bluff. We should bluff the better cards / textures, not the worse ones.

If we're only going to bet the river when we make our hand, and NEVER bluff, then, yes, we should just fold turn.

If we're ALWAYS going to bluff, we're calling too much, and bluffing WAY too much.

I'd expect theory to say we should figure out which cards and how many of them we'll be bluffing before we call the turn, and make sure the total range is justified by the pot odds and implied odds.

Like, here, we might decide that we're going to rep a straight on any T or 5, and we might rep QX if hero checks to us on a Q. So we have 9 clubs that will make our flush, plus 9 non-club Q's, T's, and 5's, giving us 9 bluff outs, for a total of 18 cards we plan to bet if V checks to us.

That seems perfectly balanced, at least so far.

If we think we can get stacks in when we make our flush, we'll get there around 18% of the time, which is 1 in 5.5, and we're getting 4.5 to 1 implied odds on the turn, so we're getting the correct implied odds to chase. Things start to fall apart if we DON'T think he'll be calling a river jam when we hit our flush. The less often we think he'll call a jam with a worse hand, the more this becomes a fold.

It's also worth noting that V could bet river when we make our flush, possibly with a bigger flush, and we'll lose. Hard to build that into our calcs, but in game, I think it's reasonable to adjust by decreasing our implied odds. If we did that here, we'd probably decide the implied odds aren't good enough, making this a fold.

The only way to offset the risk of NOT getting stacks in when we have the best hand is by making some assumptions about winning the pot when we bluff. Those are harder calcs to do in game.

We have to figure out what size bet we'll use to make him fold on the river with our bluffs, and how often he'll fold. This also assumes V is going to check to us if we catch one of those 9 bluff cards, which he may not do.

Judging by the line he's taken so far, I think it's fair to assume he'll be checking to us on most rivers. Whatever bet size we plan to use, we need to figure that out before we call the turn, if we're going to do the math.

If we plan to bet $400, there will be $1110 in the pot, so I think that means our bluff only needs to work something like 26.5% of the time to break even, which isn't very often. The larger we go with our bet size, the more often V should fold, and the more often we need him to fold, which is why our default bluff size isn't just all-in. The more often we think V will fold, the smaller we can go.

We'll catch one of those bluff cards 18% of the time, and....honestly, I'm not even sure where to go with the math here. I think we're supposed to figure out what total percentage of the time we'll catch one of our bluff outs AND he folds to our bet, then figure out the implied odds we're getting on the turn, but I can't even do that sitting in front of my computer, much less in my head while sitting at the table. I have no idea how to figure out how often he'll check to us on the river, but maybe the assumption on the turn should just be 100% when we're figuring this out.

This might be a leak (probably), but in game, in your spot, I'm probably just folding turn, because A) even if we improve to a flush, it's not the nuts, B) I hate bluffing missed flush draws on the river, C) there's no guarantee V will even give us the opportunity to bluff by checking, and D) V's bet sizing, although it looks weak because it's decreasing, is still too large for me to want to hazard a big river bluff, especially knowing my table image is usually $hlt.

But if I did want to make the call, with a plan to bluff, I'm probably not going to bother counting all the bluff outs, and no way in hell am I attempting the mental math. I'm mostly just going to be deciding if I can justify the turn call and the river bluff based almost entirely on my read of V and my own table image. If I think V is going to check-fold most rivers, I'll call, and figure out the rest when I see the river card and see what V does.

But, again, that's rare. I'm mostly folding, not hero-calling turn with the intention of hero-bluffing river. That's some kamikaze $hlt.

I checked back and lost to AK. I was frustrated, but now I'm sure that checking OTR is the right play. In theory.

What hands does our opponent fold? AJ, AT, KJ, KT I block all of them.

Bluffing here is much better with 98 and T9.
$350-400
Q never folds here anyway, so there's no need to make it bigger. I agree with this point.


However, I feel like we also need to pay attention to tells and bet sizing. Just like Doc mentioned in this thread earlier.

So another question:

What tells or bet sizing usually indicate that our opponent has a draw or something weak, and least likely a strong hand?

Actually, I see that calling the turn here with 98(OESD, no clubs) is much better than JT.

98 has more ways to improve with the OESD. Think I'd still prefer having the club draw to go with it. Hard to feel bad making a 9 high flush after chasing it the whole way.

We could argue that making 2nd pair with a J on the river is better than making it with a T, 9, or 8, because a pair of jacks beats all the TT, 99 and 88 in V's range that might take this line. Tens beats 99/88, etc.

As an aside, if V bet small on flop and big on turn, or big on both streets, you shouldn't chase draws as much, so V will call down more when the draws come in, unless he thinks you're a fish who will chase even when you shouldn't.

The way he bet this, with decreased sizes on each street, I'd expect him to give up a lot on the river, and over-fold, especially if the draws come in, but also very often when they don't. So we don't need to bet huge, and we don't want tp raise if we make our flush and he barrels big. Guaranteed he was on the same flush draw and probably has the ace or king.

FWIW, I think he'd have folded to a $400-$600 bet on the river.

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Great response. Agreed with everything said there. Fold turn unless we are planning to bluff river